Introduction

Setting up the rt61 card requires compiling the kernel modules. This is very simple if you follow the below step by step instructions. These instructions have been tested on Ubuntu 6.10 (a.k.a. Ubuntu Edgy Eft), they could work on other release of Ubuntu.

**NOTE: On Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid), rt61 seems to work out of the box so you doný need to take any of these steps!

Installing the necessary packages for the compilation

You will need to install a few packages for the compilation process. For installation of packages, please refer to InstallingSoftware.

gcc

build-essential

linux-headers

If you are familiar with the command line, you could type the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers build-essential gcc

If you get the error:

You should explicitly select one to install.
E: Package linux-headers has no installation candidate

Try

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential gcc

Getting the RT61 Driver from Ralink

Ralink Web Site have the Linux driver for download, check http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2 and download the latest stable version (the current version is 1.1.0.0 as of January 2007: RT61_Linux_STA_Drv1.1.0.0.tar.gz). To download the version, you can use your favourite browser, or you can use the command line as follow:

Configuration of the module

The Ralink modules is configured using a single file. If you know how to use vi or vim, it is perhaps more suitable to use it. But in case you do not, you can use gedit but take care not to use any characters that are not ASCII.

The last step is to modify the file /etc/network/interfaces to set-up your specific networking settings. Depending if you want to use DHCP (recommended) or static IP address you have two different configuration, but in both case you need to first edit the file:

Static IP

Getting your network up and running

Everything is now done, you just have to tell so to Ubuntu. You can either reboot, but instead of loosing your time, you can simply type this command:

$ sudo ifup ra0

Feisty Fawn Installation

With Fesity Fawn the rt61 drivers are included in the basic install. So downloading and compiling drivers is unecessary. It may be important (and time saving) for you to note that if you require either no or WEP encryption the Network Manager applet can usually be used seccessfully to establish connectivity. This guie will concentrate on getting WPA encryption to work. Specifically WPA-PSK using TKIP.

If your system is running the rev B version you can continue with this guide as is. However if you are using the original then you will need to uninstall the Network Manager applet as otherwise the network destinations will always return as unreachable. The Network Manager can be uninstalled using the following command:

sudo dpkg -P network-manager network-manager-gnome

Getting Started

The first thing to do is check that Ubuntu has indeed detected your card and that the appropriate driver is available. This is done as follows:

This shows that the interface has been configured as ra1. Note that in previous versions of Ubuntu, this would be ra0, but in Feisy Fawn it is normal for a fresh installation to name the interface as ra1.

Disabling the Interface

The interface needs to be taken down in order for the changes we are going to make to take effect. This is done as follows:

$sudo ip link set dev ra1 down

It is a good idea to type ip a after this in order to check the device has been taken down successfully. If it has then the ra1 interface should not appear in the output.

Configuring the connection

The next job is to configure the connection with the parameters specific to your network. For this you will need your: 1. SSID (Network Name as broadcast by the router) 2. Encryption Type (Here we are assuming WPAPSK TKIP 3. Secret WPA Key (this is the hexadecimal key NOT the passphrase. If you only have the passphrase you can generate your WPA Key using the following command:

Typing iwconfig should display the new details of your connection. However don't worry if it the link quality is still 0/100 because sometimes the changes don't apply until the interface is brouught up again.

IP and Routing Details

The next thing to do is set the IP address of the card and bring it back online (up)

OK so now the IP address is all set up and the network can detect the network and has a link quality of above 0. The next thing is to set up the routing table. Delete the default gateway from your machine and replace it with that of the new connection.

You should now find that the computer can ping any address on the internet.

HAPPY BROWSING!!

Automatic Configuration on Startup

Obviously you won't be wanting to go through this process every time the computer boots so we need to write a script in order to do this for us. There is a configuration file called /etc/network/interfaces that we need to modify in order to make this happen.